Electronic trading is revolutionizing the futures industry. For example, future contracts in Europe are 100% electronically traded. Trading of futures contracts in the United States will almost certainly be done electronically in the very near future. Five weeks after launch of the a/c/e electronic platform at the Chicago Board of Trade Exchange (CBOT) 25% of financial futures trades were made electronically. The rapid growth of electronic trading is further illustrated by the fact that the German-Swiss Exchange (EUREX) founded in 1990 has surpassed the CBOT as the leader in futures trading.
There are substantial limitations of current ‘mainframe’ electronic trading systems. Designed more than a decade ago, electronic futures trading platforms are based on rigid, outdated ‘mainframe’ architecture. All message traffic passes through centralized Exchange servers. Communication is ‘one-to-all’ and ‘all-to-one’, i.e. every price update triggers thousands of messages. Users are unable to flexibly query the market for indicative quotes for ‘wholesale’ orders or customized spread combinations. While ‘mainframe’ architecture works for futures trading with a single price point, it fails completely in markets that are ‘relational’, i.e. every price is linked to other—or hundreds of other—prices. This problem is illustrated by the relationship of E-futures, E-options and E-spreads.
Outright E-Futures have a single price point. As the futures price changes, traders cancel, modify and replace single orders. This is illustrated in Table I.
TABLE I30-Year Bond Futures Book Contract - December 2000BIDSASKSQuantityPricePriceQuantity35098.2198.2222025098.2098.2315030098.1998.25400
Options involve puts and calls and combinations of puts and calls and/or futures, as well as straddles, strangles, butterflies, strips, etc. all of which result in thousands of price points being linked to each future. Thus, as the underlying futures price moves, thousands of price updates are needed. This is illustrated in Table II.
TABLE II30-Year Bond Options Book Contract - December 2000BIDSASKSInstrumentStrikeQuantityPricePriceQuantityCall9800200130136100Call9900150556350Put9800504752250Put97001752831300Straddle9600-10002005558150Call Spread9800-1000250252650
There are few ‘real’ prices displayed for options and spreads on electronic screens because market makers cannot make tight markets across numerous price points. As the futures price moves, ‘stale’ options and spread prices remain exposed to the market.
E-Options and E-Spreads require a blend of indicative and binding quotes. On a trading floor a trader has only one voice but quotes across hundreds of options and spreads. A trader makes continuous indicative quotes issuing hand held sheets with a grid of theoretical values. At the moment of trade, the indicative quote is ‘refreshed’ and becomes binding.
Current electronic options and spread markets have significant disadvantages. In the United States, despite the rapid growth of electronic futures, there is no real volume in electronic options and spreads. These markets still trade on the floor. In Europe, where futures markets are 100% electronic, price discovery in options and spreads takes place manually in an informal “cash” phone market. The European ‘phone market’ is widely disliked by all participants except the “cash” brokers who charge commissions to both sides of a trade. European options screens do not show ‘real’ prices. End users complain of the lack of transparency (only the “cash” brokers know the real bids and offers) and the inability of end users to verify that orders have received ‘best execution’ treatment. Users and market makers also do not like the high cost of “cash” brokerage. Brokerage costs for market makers are passed on to users in the form of wider bid—ask spreads. Exchanges, regulators and end users are concerned by the counterparty risk inherent to the system. Finally, market integrity rests on the performance guarantees of unregulated, thinly capitalized “cash” brokers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,483 describes a computer-based system for determining a set of opening prices for options traded on an options exchange and for allocating public order imbalances at the opening of trade. This patent is incorporated by reference in its entirety.